Pro-Life = Pro-God? Think Again.

Our executive director, Monica Snyder, recently appeared on the podcast Dear Jane. The episode title is “Pro-Life = Pro-God? Think Again. A Conversation with Secular Pro-Life.” You can listen on Apple, RSS, or Boomplay, or read the transcript below.

[Special thanks to volunteer Anna Zwergel for her transcription work. If you’d like to volunteer to transcribe or translate, please fill out our volunteer survey.]

Monica Snyder: We’ve had people come to us many times over the years since we’ve existed, delighted to realize we exist, because they thought that they were the only ones, or they may be aware that other pro-life atheists or secular people exist but they are very very very nervous about having their immediate social circles and professional and academic circles find out that they are pro-life. 

Scott Baker: Welcome to the Dear Jane Podcast. I’m your host, Scott Baker. Think everyone in the pro-life movement has a faith base? Might want to think again. On this edition of Dear Jane, we introduce you to the group called Secular Pro-Life. This is a pro-life group that includes atheists, agnostics, and others who you may not readily associate with the pro-life movement. Monica Snyder is the executive director of Secular Pro-Life and joins me on this edition of Dear Jane. Monica, welcome to Dear Jane. Thank you for joining us. So, tell us a little bit about Secular Pro-Life.

Monica: So Secular Pro-Life is an atheist-led anti-abortion organization. I’m the executive director. I am an atheist. The board is led by atheists, but you don’t have to be an atheist to be involved. We have a three-part mission. The first part is to create space in the pro-life movement for non-religious people to do anti-abortion work and that could be atheists, Agnostics, Humanists. It could also be people that have a whole variety of kinds of religious or supernatural beliefs, but don’t consider themselves particularly religious or affiliated with an organized religion. The second part of the mission is to advance secular arguments against abortion, and the third part is to create interfaith coalitions of anyone who wants to advance those secular arguments, though to be very clear, we work with practicing Catholics, evangelical Christians, and the people more typically associated with the pro-life movement, if they are they kind of people who want to advance secular arguments. We don’t actually really care what you believe personally in terms of religion. We just care if you’re with us on the abortion issue, and so we work on all three of those fronts. We try to specifically seek out and encourage atheists and agnostics to do more anti-abortion work, but we also work with all sorts of people who want to help us make these arguments for the public. 

Scott: You know what? I kinda like what you said there, because for whatever reason, I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to tell you “I’m a Christian,” and your response was “okay that’s great.” 

Monica: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Scott: Yeah, so let’s go ahead. I mean it doesn’t really matter. 

Monica: So to be very clear, it’s run by atheists, but we are not trying to create more atheists. We’re trying to create more pro-life people. That’s the distinction I’m trying to make. We actually specifically avoid religious debates. We are not interested. We focus very specifically on anti-abortion discussions and not religious debates. 

Scott: Well, and I already learned something [by] going to your website. Secular does not just mean atheist. 

Monica: No, it just means non-religious, basically. So we have followers who are Christian and they have their own personal views about religion, but they specifically want to make arguments that don’t involve religion, because the circles they run in and the environments they find themselves, they’re with a lot of people who don’t necessarily share their Christian views and they want to be able to speak in a common language, basically. 

Scott: So, help me understand, or give us a feel for, what is the size of the force out there if you will? The size of the secular pro-life movement? How many people are we talking about? 

Monica: It is difficult to estimate. We try to guess based on polls. The best that we can tell, there is at least 12 million Americans who are specifically secular and oppose abortion, but it really depends on how you define both “secular” and “opposing abortion.” For example if you are only looking at atheists it would be much smaller, because only 3 percent of the American population is atheist. If you were looking at anyone who considers themselves not particularly religious regardless of what they might think about the existence of God or the afterlife, that would be a lot larger. If when you say “anti-abortion” you mean anyone who is opposed to elective abortion in a general sense, that’s really broad. If you drill down to talking about different kinds of exceptions it might get more specific. So, that’s the long answer. The short answer is probably somewhere between 12 and 20 million people who are specifically secular and oppose abortion. And if you’re just talking about vaguely non-religious, it gets a lot larger than that especially, and you’ve probably seen this, there’s a lot of polls to show that over the last 10 years and increasingly so, there’s the rise of the “nones.” And I don’t mean N-U-N-S, I mean N-O-N-E-S. The rise of the non-religious. And increasingly people are saying they don’t consider themselves affiliated with a religion and there’s lots of questions about who those people are and what that means. Are they atheists? No, most of them are not atheists. A lot of them are ex-Christians or nominally religious like maybe they go for Christmas and that’s it, and they just don’t consider themselves very religious. We’re interested in that group too. We’re interested in talking to the people who are going to be motivated by something other than a specific religious faith or a specific, you know, holy text or something like that. 

Scott: Are these folks afraid to activate because maybe they don’t want to join a particular political team or commit to supporting all the other political issues that might be perceived to be attached to the entire pro-life movement? 

Monica: Yeah, there are several barriers to entry I think. One of them is that, the more secular they are, especially actual atheists, the more likely they are to be in social circles, professional circles, that are overwhelmingly pro-choice, so even if they already harbor pro-life views, they are very likely to feel alienated. We’ve had people come to us many times over the years since we’ve existed, delighted to realize we exist, because they thought that they were the only ones, or they may be aware that other pro-life atheists or secular people exist, but they are very very very nervous about having their immediate social circles and professional and academic circles find out that they are pro-life. For example, we have several atheist volunteers who work with us on condition of anonymity. They have been enormously helpful, but they do not want their names associated with anything, and they don’t want the people in their lives to find out that they are so into this that they will do activism. So we have that barrier to entry. Then of course, secular people, not all secular people, but secular people are more likely to affiliate with traditionally left-wing viewpoints and left-wing circles so even apart from the abortion debate you’re going to have sort of a feeling of alienation if you’re taking what is traditionally seen as a very very conservative right-wing position. Our group really strives to be bi-partisen for that reason. We’re trying to make a space for secular people, but also for just really anyone who I refer to as a “non-traditional pro-lifer.” And by that I mean anyone who is not necessarily religious, or straight, or white. I mean those stereotypes aren’t all necessarily even true, but when people perceive it that way it can make a big difference to whether or not they want to get involved and want to do activism work. In fact, and I won’t retell the entire story here, but our board vice-president — her name is Terrisa Bukovinac and she originally got involved in pro-life work when she saw me working with Secular Pro-Life. We were Facebook friends. She is an animal rights activist, and a vegan, and a registered Democrat, and she lived in San Francisco. And she didn’t think that really she could be pro-life because of all these other factors and then she saw online, she saw me interacting with this group Secular Pro-Life (she’s an atheist), and when she saw that, it was like a lightbulb moment. She realized that there is space for her to do this without getting yelled at by both sides basically. You still do get yelled at by both sides, but you have friends there with you while you’re getting yelled at, so that helps. 

Scott: I’m wondering how that even would come up in conversation, I mean…

Monica: Which part? 

Scott: Well you’re talking about, you know, people are so worried about it that they’re wanting to remain anonymous — their pro-life beliefs, I mean. 

Monica: Yeah.

Scott: So keep this anonymous and people are getting yelled at and I mean I’m envisioning… okay I’m going to use some stereotypes here, I’ll admit, but you know if somebody’s in conversation just about the issues of the day and they’re in 99% alignment on all the issues of the day until this comes up, pro-life abortion issues come up… 

Monica: Mmm-hmm.

Scott: They’re probably going to be quiet on this one, so how would their pro-life stance even come up. They’re usually just going to be quiet. 

Monica: Right and that’s what they do and that generally works for them, but they’re concerned that if they do work with us and involve their name like if they write a blog post, if they go to a protest that is televised, or a walk or a march or something — they’re worried that if they put their name on it, somebody will find out. And especially for people who are younger and still job hunting, still worried about background checks, or just you know, your employers can look you up. To be frank, for most kinds of pro-life activism, it is not likely that people will find out about it unless you want them to, but once your name does get publicly attached on the internet it’s always possible and for some people that is a very nerve-wracking possibility. 

Scott: This takes a lot of courage though I’m thinking — for some of these folks to actually go public with their pro-life stance. 

Monica: Yeah for some of them. And I think it’s hard for those of us that exist in social circles that largely agree with us or at least are aware that people disagree and different people have different views, it’s not as big of a deal. So I am very “out” about my pro-life views, obviously, and so I have lots of pro-choice friends, but they know what I think and it’s not something I have to tiptoe around, and so it’s hard for me to stop and remember what it was like when I was younger, when I was concerned about job hunting, and when I lived in California in higher education and it was very obvious that it is just assumed that everyone around you is pro-choice. People make little offhand comments, not constantly, but frequently enough that it’s clear to everyone involved that we all assume that all “correct thinking people” are pro-choice and if you’re not, it’s a “thing.” It could be socially awkward and you worry that it could be a problem in other realms and I think it’s hard for me to remember now because it hasn’t been a problem for me for a long time, but for some people it’s not even just a professional thing, it’s their friends, and people they’re very close to and they want to get along with and people they have a lot of ties to, and then you have something like the Dobbs decision comes out and everyone is mouthing off on social media and they’re saying some very vitriolic things. It was actually a little surprising to me because from my perspective Dobbs, it wasn’t everything, but it was a big important step forward for pro-life work — in my opinion it was very big. And I felt enormous relief and joy and gratitude and surprise, like a lot of emotions mixed with this sort of pensiveness about the whole nature of the debate, but I was surprised how many people on our side felt despair. We had multiple people contact us privately, especially secular people, over the ensuing weeks feeling just unbelievably alienated and worried that the forces against us are too powerful because they were in situations where all they see is tons of rage and vitriol and specifically directed at people who hold their views and now the people saying this don’t know they hold these views, but people they are close to. Sometimes it was spouses, sometimes it’s very close friends that you’ve known for years, and you knew they were probably pro-choice and you didn’t really talk about it and then this happens and they’re saying some really aggressive, angry things and we had several… I had somebody ask us, “is there some kind of pro-life atheist zoom meetup or something? I really need to talk to someone who gets it.” And we all know a lot of pro-life people. There’s plenty of pro-life people in the world, but it is different in kind, when a lot of them are very very religious and they express their pro-life views in terms of religion and we’re not against that, we just don’t relate. 

Scott: Right.

Monica: And so there’s an element of trying to create a space, literally sometimes, of a place where people who are not religious and who are against abortion can gather and be free to kind of talk it through without our pro-choice peers being absolutely outraged that we have the audacity to be not religious and pro-life and then our pro-life Christian friends also, usually they’re not as aggressive, but if we talk about things in terms of secularism there’s always an element of people who want to gently let us know that, you know, “Atheism doesn’t actually make sense and we’re so glad you’re with us, but I hope you think that through a little bit more.” And like that gets very very old, so we’re trying to make a space for the people who share both the secular position and the pro-life position to just work together. I mean it’s so exhausting. 

Scott: Oh you said a lot there. You just raised a lot of questions. So we’re going to take a break and when we come back we’re going to talk about how the pro-life movement treats secular pro-lifers and then we’re going to talk about how really the basis of the value of life for secular pro-lifers. That and much much more when we come back with Monica Snyder of Secular Pro-Life here on Dear Jane.

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Scott: We’re back with Monica Snyder from Secular Pro-Life. She is their executive director. So Monica, in the first segment you were talking a little bit about some of the unique challenges that [secular pro-lifers] face, and one of the things — in the pro-life movement I should say specifically — one of the things you talked about was how secular pro-lifers are treated by others within the movement. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is this new term that I only recently learned in the last several weeks, and that’s “side-glances.” Do you get a lot of that? I mean how are secular pro-lifers treated in the movement generally? What’s your experience?

Monica: So to preface this, the vast majority of the work we do is online and that does change the dynamic a lot. So we do have a lot of people who follow us and appreciate our work who are Christian, but they are self-selecting to follow us and they tend to be generally very supportive and there’s not so much of the side glance element. Sometimes our work goes outside of our normal online spheres and you can tell when it does cause you’ll start to get more pro-choice push-back and more [of] the type of religious pro-lifers who are concerned about the fact that we are secular. And so online the side glances element will usually take the form of aggressive questions about why atheists should care about morality at all and how Atheism doesn’t really make sense because you can’t ground your morality compared to Christianity. That’s one of the biggest ones, and then sometimes well-meaning, but frankly still kind of frustrating comments about how they really hope we think more about this, how they are praying for us and just, generally people who — I know what they’re doing is they’re worried about my soul and they’re hoping I’ll come around — but they don’t understand, first of all how many people say that. And secondly, they don’t bother to find out (not that I would necessarily talk to online strangers about this) anything about why a person is atheist. I find that Christians seem to assume that if you’re atheist, you’ve always been atheist, you’ve never been exposed to Christianity and you just haven’t really thought it through. And that’s not super fun. I usually don’t respond to those kind of comments, because as I mentioned in the first segment, we do not engage in religious debates at secular pro-life. So I usually just literally ignore it. I might talk to pro-life activist friends privately about these kinds of things if we have a friendship and I trust them, but random online people letting me know that they hope I think it it through more? I just don’t even bother. In person, it tends to be more obvious. So when we table at conferences, when we give speeches or presentations, when we go to you know fundraising galas or just different events where you are in person with people, you are more likely to come across people who weren’t expecting you cause they didn’t go follow your Facebook page and they are more likely to want to have a conversation with you right here and now about why Atheism [doesn’t] make sense, and I find that there are sort of a couple different versions of this. There are people who are just excited to meet an atheist in person and get a chance to talk to someone directly about this. I presume that they have a lot of ideas about religion and Atheism that they’ve talked through with other people that share their view, but they would like to talk to someone who actually disagrees just to get out of the echo chamber and to have that interesting conversation. And I don’t begrudge anyone that. I love people getting out of echo chambers, that’s a great idea, but I would like to consent to the conversation first. So there’s that kind of person. They’re not necessarily aggressive about it, it’s an intellectual curiosity for them and that’s one kind of person. Another kind of person is very well-meaning and sweet, where it’s the same conversation, but they want to prod a little bit, because they’re hoping to bring up points that will engender some kind of cognitive dissonance in me that maybe eventually down the road I will become Christian because I realize that Atheism doesn’t make sense. They’re trying to save my soul and I understand that they’re doing it from a good place. Still not a conversation I really want to have, especially with someone who doesn’t know anything about me except for that they met me 30 seconds ago and they found out I was an atheist. And then the worst kind are the people who are like kind of mad that I’m an atheist and they seem to be confused and concerned and maybe even a little bit angry to find at a pro-life event, just sitting right next to them, is someone who will just say they’re an atheist, and they don’t know what it means. They often mistakenly think that I’m going to try to argue with them about Christianity or that I have some kind of motivation to bring down religious content or something like that, which again [they] didn’t really find out about us, because as I’ve said our group is absolutely not interested in religious debates. We’re so not interested in religious debates that regardless of which of these 3 characters wants to talk to me about Atheism, I won’t. I’m not going to. I’m not going to. If it’s a private conversation outside of my professional work I might, but in the context of Secular Pro-Life, I’m not going to get into religious debates with people about whether Atheism or Christianity makes sense. We’re trying to build coalitions and arguing about religion when I’m not even trying to convince people to be atheists is at best useless, and at worst directly counterproductive to the very work I’m trying to do, which is to bring more people into the pro-life side, [and] have more people equipped to give secular arguments when the context calls for it and I don’t want people to feel alienated because they were sitting at the same dinner table as me and someone arguing about whether atheism or Christianity is true. 

Scott: You think secular pro-lifers are made to feel less pro-life because they are secular?

Monica: Oh yes, I think there are a lot of Christians who are hoping that if they ask certain probing questions they will eventually get an atheist pro-lifer to be a Christian pro-lifer, but in my experience they’re much more likely to get an atheist pro-lifer to be an atheist pro-choicer. That’s what’s probably going to happen because — I’m not saying atheists never convert to Christianity, obviously some do — but I don’t think it’s done by strangers at a pro-life gala. I have a really big uphill battle getting atheists to do activist work even if they are already pro-life, and it’s made more uphill when they go to events where it is overwhelmingly religious even if nobody bothers them about it, just because it’s alienating, much less if they go to events where it’s overwhelmingly religious and people are trying to push them to defend their Atheism in a public setting with a bunch of people they don’t know, usually with several people listening in. It’s very unpleasant and sometimes I think the other side doesn’t understand this. So my mother is Catholic. She really supports my work and we’ve talked a lot about this before and I’ve tried to explain to her the phenomenon that I’m explaining to you and sometimes she says “well who cares, just ignore them” and yeah for the most part I do, but I am so devoted to this that I do it for a living. Not everybody is and even with me ignoring them sometimes — just imagine if there was a grave human rights issue that you cared very very passionately about and you really wanted to work on, but for whatever reason in this alternate universe almost everyone who worked on it were atheists. And they’re glad to have you around. They’re glad, even if you’re a Christian, they’re glad to have you around because we share this issue and we’re allies on this, but every time you went to work on it you had to just put out of your mind frequent discussions about how obviously God isn’t real and more people should read, you know, God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and then they find out you’re a Christian and they’re kind of like, “oh okay um, you know that doesn’t make sense right?” Or even in a very kind way they’re like “I just want to encourage you. I’ll leave you alone. I can tell you don’t want to talk about it, but I just want to encourage you keep thinking about it okay?” And you’re like “thank you, if only I had thought to think about it.” You see what I’m saying?

Scott: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. 

Monica: For the most part, for the most part, and I want to emphasize this, the Christians who follow our content are very supportive and they don’t try to start religious arguments and they’re very kind for the most part. It’s not everybody, but if the minority is vocal enough [that] it still is a barrier for me in terms of my group’s mission. We’re trying to make space for people who aren’t religious to feel like they can work here and if they feel like the only way they can do anti-abortion work is to have continual little comments about how a core part of their identity is kind of stupid then that’s a problem. That makes it difficult, yeah. 

Scott: We’re talking with Monica Snyder who is the executive director of Secular Pro-Life. So let’s talk about one of the things that you mentioned there. And on your website you have a piece there that’s very good. It delves into this pretty deeply, and that is the source of your pro-life belief and it’s a great piece and I would encourage people to read it. So the heart of it is this: So me as a Christian I’m pro-life and a lot of people in the pro-life movement as Christians we’re pro-life because we believe that people are made in the image of God and people are God’s Creation, but then as you alluded to earlier people come up to you and “okay well if you don’t believe that how can you actually be pro-life?” and all this. So help us understand, what is the basis of your passion for being pro-life? 

Monica: So we get this question a whole lot, usually from pro-life Christians, sometimes from pro-choice secular people, although the context of those two things is very different. So for pro-life Christians as you just said, they want to know, not just why we’re pro-life, but why we care about anything related to morality at all. Or maybe to put a more generous spin on it, they recognize that we clearly do care a lot. They’re not saying we don’t care. They’re not saying we’re sociopaths. They just wonder where we think that passion comes from, right, if it’s not coming from an objective morality that stems from a Creator that reflects all of Goodness basically right? 

Scott: Right.

Monica: I usually don’t try to explain that to them. I usually say the secular pro-life debate is not about whether human beings have rights. In my experience atheists, Agnostics, and generally non-religious people are not [the ones] asking. They are [not] asking the question “Do human beings have human rights and if so why? And where did the morality come from?” They’re not interested in that at all. Generally they just accept, and they — I shouldn’t say they just accept — they may have a whole variety of different reasons why this makes sense, but they start with the premise that human beings have rights and then we ask them to make sure, when they’re talking about that that they include human beings even before they are born. The secular pro-life debate is not “Do human beings have rights and why or why not?” It’s “If you believe human beings have rights, we want to know why you’re not including prenatal children.” That’s the secular pro-life debate. A religious debate between Christian and atheist pro-lifers would get more into well where does morality come from in the first place, but I have found that at least 9 times out of 10 when people ask us where does your morality come from, they’re Christin pro-lifers concerned about Atheism. They’re not pro-choice people concerned about pro-lifeism. All that being said, there are conversations about where would an atheist ground their morality. Do atheists believe in objective morality versus just not being concerned about it or thinking it’s subjective. And if they do, how do they make sense of that and I’m not going to pretend to be an expert to explain all of it. There was an interesting debate. It’s on YouTube. It’s between William Lane Craig and Erik Wielenberg and they both start with the premise that objective morality exists and they argue about whether Christianity or Atheism can better explain that and why or why not. You can find arguments from atheists about objective morality. You can also find arguments from atheists that say there isn’t an objective morality, but we still care about things for these other reasons. I’m not saying they don’t exist; I’m just saying we don’t get into it because we find that in almost every case, secular people already share that premise with us and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can see lots of non-religious people very involved in other human rights issues. And whether a Christian pro-lifer will agree with them or not, you can see that obviously when people are fighting for rights for transgender people, LGBT, better rights for immigration, and things like that. Pro-choice secular people are fighting for human rights as they see it when they argue that women must have a right to control their bodies and women must have equality, they’re talking about human rights for women. They don’t stop and think “wait a minute, do women (and men) actually have any rights at all?” They start with “there are certain fundamental really really important rights and we are passionate about fighting to make sure people have these rights.” They start with that. And actually a point of wry irritation for me [is] the perspective, and I may be biased, is that only pro-life Athesists are asked to ground their morality. Nobody asks pro-choice atheists to do that. Certainly nobody asks Christians on either side to do that. Nobody is going to pro-choice atheists and saying — or not atheists, I feel like we can just be generically secular — if you’re not religious then on what basis do you say bodily rights exist? On what basis do you say equality matters? Nobody says that. And nobody says that to pro-life Christians because they assume it’s based on the image of God, which is fair. It’s only pro-life atheists! Only pro-life atheists, that have to like start from scratch and explain the existence of the universe in order to say that you shouldn’t be allowed to kill babies and I resent that. I don’t think that that’s an equal standard. I kind of got on a tangent. I’m sorry. 

Scott: No, no that’s an interesting point. So you’ve laid out a lot of challenges here for a secular pro-lifer. Both in terms of expressing their pro-life views in their friendship circles and that sort of thing. How can we help them? How can we help, if someone is listening and they can say “oh man Monica, I’m hearing you. That’s me. I’m pro-life, but boy I just cannot connect with the pro-life community in so much of the other ways.” How can we help them? What tools do they need? How can the pro-life community come alongside these folks and help them out?

Monica: That’s such a wonderful question. I’m really glad you asked. So first of all, things like this podcast are a great way. The more that you send up flares letting people know that our group exists or other non-traditional groups exist, the more you increase our voice, the more likely it is for us to reach those people who didn’t realize it was an option. And they can go to our website secularprolife.org or we have content across many social media channels and connect with us there and so [by] you amplifying my voice, that helps a lot. But in terms of besides having me specifically do interviews, I think that pro-life Christians can help by trying to make their content more inclusive and more secular and this is where it gets tricky because then they feel like I’m saying you know “hide the fact that you’re Christian.” And that’s not what I’m saying, but to the extent that you can make content that doesn’t rely on a specific Christian basis, that helps. I also think it’s very helpful if pro-life groups — and we can argue about the different definitions of pro-life so I will say — if anti-abortion groups focus very specifically on abortion and not on other issues. I find that both sides of the aisle tend to assume pro-lifers are conservatives and pro-choicers are liberals and there’s a correlation there. No one’s denying that, but it’s something like a third of Republicans are pro-choice and something like a fourth of Democrats are pro-life and that’s not one-to-one with religion and secularism, but secular people do usually tend to be more left-leaning and you can kind of make them feel more included by just focusing on abortion and leaving the other culture war issues out of it. So this hasn’t come up as much since the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage, but in the years preceding that, we often had situations where there would be a pro-life rally or something that was about abortion and then they would make side comments about voting for traditional marriage and our group doesn’t take a position on that one way or another, we’re only talking about abortion, but it alienates people who are pro-life, but don’t feel the same way you do about this other issue, and so if you’re trying to increase, in my opinion, if you’re trying to increase the pro-life numbers as much as possible, just talk about that. Also I have a recurring, prescheduled tweet I put out on our Twitter account at least once a month where I just remind people hey, if you’re talking about pro-choice people and pro-choice view points, just say “pro-choice.” Don’t say “Democrats.” Don’t say “Feminists.” Don’t say “Leftists.” Just say pro-choice, because there are pro-life Democrats. There are pro-life Feminists. And we want them to know – hey, same team, same team okay! You are welcome here and both sides do it. The pro-choice side also does it. But to the extent you can, focus on this issue, leave left versus right out of it, leave religion versus secularism out of it. It’s not always possible. Sometimes it depends on what you’re doing and there is a place — I always want to make sure I emphasize this — there’s a place for talking about your religious views. There’s plenty of pro-life outreach that goes on for example in churches or in communities where you know the people you’re talking to and share that basis of faith with you. There is nothing wrong with talking about that with people. There is a whole group called “Catholics for Choice.” I’d encourage pro-life Catholics to go talk to them about Catholicism, please do. Okay there’s a place for it. I’m just saying when you’re trying to do a broader outreach, try to stay focused on just abortion to the extent that you can. And go to our website, see what kind of arguments we’re using, copy them to the extent you think they make sense, you know that’s why we’re here. And I’m not pretending we invented all of them. I’m just trying to amplify the ones that don’t require any particular religious content. 

Scott: Again the website is secularprolife.org. Monica Snyder, thank you so much for joining us here on Dear Jane.

Monica: Thank you for having me.